Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' came from experience

4:44 AM,
Aug. 30, 2013

Richard Rothwell did this portrait of Mary Shelley.

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"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself."

When Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was 16, she began an affair with Percy Blysshe Shelley, who would become known as a great Romantic poet. He was a longtime admirer of Mary's father, the utilitarian philosopher William Godwin.

William Godwin had married the famous author of "Vindication of the Rights of Women," Mary Wollstonecraft, but was ...